The Shun Blue Steel series was developed in partnership with award-winning chef Chris Cosentino, known for his “nose to tail” philosophy of using the whole animal. These traditional Japanese knives feature a core of blue steel – a fine-grained carbon steel favored by professional chefs for its blazing sharpness – that is encased between two layers of stainless steel. With its triangular blade, the honesuki is used for boning poultry, but it also excels at other meat-trimming tasks, such as frenching a rack of lamb.

Japanese san mai construction features carbon steel between two layers of stainless steel, providing the ultra-sharpness of carbon steel with the easier maintenance and added corrosion resistance of stainless steel.

Blue steel, hardened to 61 Rockwell, is a super-hard, fine-grained carbon steel known for taking and maintaining an extremely sharp edge (“blue” refers to the paper the raw steel comes wrapped in).

Mirror-polished blade has a bead-blasted edge where the two steels meet, showcasing the layered construction.